After a few weeks of thought, I've decided to disable comments on the WordPress site. The reason I'm doing this is because if things did turn into a flame war over there, it'd be a pain to deal with it, and I'd be the only person who could possibly do anything about it.

This isn't because of any issues we've had - actually, the commenting on it has been pretty darn civil in tone - but just as a preemptive measure.

I can't speak to the general situation RE: difficulty of IS 109; however, Cistercian 'A' had a PB of 22.53 for this set while our Cistercian 'B' team had a PB of 14.95 -- both teams competing at the Edmond Memorial Bulldog Tournament on 19 Nov.

Gregory SchweersCounty of DallasCity of IrvingCistercian Preparatory School TeamThe only Monk on this whole board

dtaylor4 wrote:The average PPB of 109 is probably being driven down by the sheer number of teams who don't do much of any good quizbowl outside of IHSSBCA Kickoffs.

To give you an idea: in the Wheaton North standard divison, the majority of the 64 teams had less than 10 PPB. At Sterling, 19 of 24 had less than 10 PPB.

109 is going to be played at Rowdy Raider next Saturday. The field for that looks to be pretty competitive and strong. Edit: Maybe it might be too soon to reach conclusions if it has still yet to be played everywhere.

ALSO I updated the difficulty adjustments for sets. You can find the values here.

I'll note that I am looking over my methodology presently, as I use all IS sets as my baseline and presently there's a notable discrepancy (~2 ppb) between IS107 & IS109.

Edit: the effective result of this is that I found HT22 harder than previously determined (so teams depending on performances on this sets will get a boost), and OLEFIN easier than previously determined (so teams depending on performances on this set will dip in the rankings).

One last post for now: to compare sets with their difficulty from last year, with the understanding of sample sizes/future stats to be incorporated/differing fields/etc:

DAFT: Nearly as difficultFKT: Much easier - average ppb is almost 3 higherHFT: average ppb is up about 3/4 of a pointHSAPQ 22: compared with 15, the average ppb is up a bit over 2 pointsIS: appears to be down, roughly 1 ppb (I'm too lazy to combine data at this point). Average ppb for the first two IS sets this year and last:

Ryan is correct about your use of Preminary LIFT stats. In the 7 match Prelims we played at LIFT, my SJHS team's PPB was 20.66. After our 5 match playoff run where we averaged 23.31 PPB, our 12 match PPB average rose to 21.69. I am not a math whiz, so I am not sure if this roughly 5% increase in our overall average by the end of the day is statistically significant for the general stat lines you are creating here. And if they would not be significant for one team, if changes like this occurred for all teams by the end of the day, would they then have statistical significance for your overall analysis of the set? Or are all of your numbers for IS 109 Prelim numbers, possibly making my questions here statistically irrelevant?

I just did some quick math for the PPB in the Preliminary, Consolation, and Championship Rounds at LIFT, and I can see why you might like to use Preliminary Rounds for assessing the big picture. After I give the stats, this comment might make more sense. Assuming my math is accurate, in the Preliminary Rounds, 40 Teams earned 2449 Bonus opportunities, scoring 31,240 Bonus points, for an overall average of 12.76 PPB for the 40 Preliminary Teams.

In the afternoon, 10 Teams played in the Championship brackets, while 15 stayed to play consolation rounds, meaning 15 teams did not stay. The 10 teams in the Championship Brackets earned 389 Bonus opportunities, scoring 7875 points, or, 20.24 PPB. Meanwhile, the 15 teams that stayed to play consolation rounds in the afternoon scored 2720 points on 268 bonus opportunities for an average of 10.15 PPB for those 15 teams. Combined, the 25 Championship and Consolation teams scored a total of 10,595 points as a result of their 657 oppoortunies, for a combined average of 16.13 PPB in the PM games. But, of course, 15 teams that played in the Prelims chose not to stay and play in the afternoon consolation rounds, so, if you want to see how the field as a whole performs, given the fact that a significant % of teams did leave after the Prelims, perhaps Prelim stats are best, at least to determine Set difficuty for an entire field.

Conversely, if you wish to use Sets to help identify with a rough chance of accuracy the best teams across regions, doubtless the combined stats for each team are best. And, BTW, the 10 teams that did make the playoffs at LIFT improved their PPB by almost 4% during their play in the Championship Playoffs. In the morning Prelims, the 10 teams that would make the playoffs scored 16,780 points on 861 Bonus opportunities for a PPB of 19.49. And, as indicated above, in the Championship Playoffs these same teams scored 7875 points on their combined 389 opportunities, for an impressive average of 20.24 PPB.

Whether or not such a 4 % increase for 10 teams in Championship Play is statistically significant or not, I do not know, but it seems these stats, if accurate, do provide a reason for using Preliminary results to gauge ALL teams playing the set, while suggesting that their use to rank TOP teams indicates that Overall or Combined stats should be used. Or so it seems to me. If others with a better grasp of the math can add insight here, it would be appreciated.

qbrank on November 20 wrote:This time around, I’ve added Michigan State’s HFT mirror, the Western Kentucky Hilltopper Invitational, the Duke Annual Fall Tournament, and the Bill Currie Memorial (I forgot to input the stats to the text display below, but it’s in my database and wouldn’t have resulted in any changes to the rankings).

Did the missing stat lines get added to this update? (Rock Bridge and Helias both attended Bill Currie Memorial and I don't see those stat lines)

Also as I could tell, Wheaton Warrenville South was missing one of there top players and Wheaton North was missing 2 normal A-teamers. Stevenson also was missing David Jin (one of their top players). Hope this helps a bit.

Hey Fred. I know that the first few Northern California tournaments haven't been that useful for rankings because of a lack of PPB stats (this is due to BAAL, which mandates a modified NAQT format in which bonuses are only read after a 15, two consecutive 10s, or tossups 11, 12, 23, and 24 in a round, making PPB difficult to calculate). However, Bellarmine and Berkeley have each run ACF-style novice tournaments, and there is an upcoming ACF-format tournament at Hillsdale. I understand that, since they are novice tournaments, these are less than helpful, but it's all we have in the way of ACF-style this semester (there are definite plans to run harder sets next semester, for what that's worth).

1) I read pretty damn close to every post on this board, without being prompted to. I am especially careful with things where STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATS would appear. I also check naqt.com and the database on this site regularly.

I don't need 18 posts telling me that a team played in a tournament in the past 24 hours. If I miss a tournament that has posted full stats, or stats as full as possible, you'll know when I leave it out of the rankings without comment for a week. When this happens, I do appreciate being told about missing the event in question, or even if it wasn't missed. Going out of your way to brag about your performance and/or pestering me for an update is just going to piss me off.

2) Players missing from tourneys is good info to know, but it's really only going to make a difference if your performance drops significantly from other events (and even then, I all but disregard it if you have multiple other superior performances).

Are the Autumn classic stats used in the rankings just the prelims? Or do you have the rest of the stats, because I can't find those.

Collin ParksDCC 13' Central Michigan 15' Michigan 17ish

"Aragorn was the famed king of Gondor, while the Iberian kingdom was Aragon. Both parties were aware of this coincidence: we have a journal entry from Aragorn that expresses his anger at receiving mail meant for King Peter IV of Aragon for the umpteenth time."~ CommodoreCoCo